For Libertarians, winning is a work in progress

Party's candidates count just being on November ballot as a victory

By ANGELA GALLOWAY, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Published
10:00 pm PDT, Sunday, October 3, 2004

It's the party that fights for its right to lose elections.

Twenty-eight Libertarian candidates for state and federal office will appear on the Nov. 2 ballot. That includes two contenders for top political posts who had to turn to a judge to get on the ballot. (Editor's Note: The original version of this story gave an incorrect number.)

None will win. But these perennial also-rans have the long term in mind, and they're slowly gaining traction.

"When I first got involved in the Libertarian Party (in 1978), I thought all you have to do is just talk to people and people would just eat this up," said gubernatorial candidate Ruth Bennett. "As you get older, reality kind of intrudes its head, and I realized this is not revolutionary -- it's evolutionary."

The Libertarian Party advocates a government based on individual liberties and personal responsibility. Libertarians favor very limited government regulation or foreign intervention and wide-open free-market practices. For example, many support minimal taxation and legalization of drugs and prostitution.

Four years ago, Libertarians polled well enough in Washington's November election to gain official "major party status," alongside Democrats and Republicans. To retain that status, at least one Libertarian candidate for statewide office must win 5 percent of the vote next month.

"I anticipate that we'll have a number of our statewide candidates get more than 5 percent in this race," said Bennett, who won nearly 8 percent of the votes in her 2000 general election bid for lieutenant governor.

Over the next several weeks, Bennett, a former travel agent, expects to campaign 30 to 60 hours a week.

This year, Libertarians will field candidates for each of the state's eight partisan races for statewide office. Seven qualified by winning at least 1 percent of the overall vote for their position. The eighth, Bennett, was put on the ballot after a Thurston County Superior Court ruled the threshold unfair given the state's new primary election structure.

Last week, the judge ordered Bennett and Senate candidate J. Mills added to the ballot, even though they received less than 1 percent of the vote.

"It's important to get on the ballot so people have choices, and there are a lot of people who are dissatisfied," Bennett said.

"If a Libertarian's not on the ballot, those people don't have anybody to vote for."

About 180,000 people voted for her in 2000.

Splitting the party's vote with another Libertarian hopeful, Bennett won almost 7,400 votes among about 1.3 million cast for the 11 candidates for governor in the state's September primary. Mills won almost 13,000 of 1.3 million ballots cast, and fell short of the threshold by less than eight one-thousandths of a percentage point.

The judge ruled that close enough, given that voters could not split their tickets among the parties and were forced to align with one ballot this year for the first time in seven decades.

"Winning this particular election is far less important than to win eventually," Mills said. And "being on the ballot is the best way to spread the word to other voters and citizens about the fact that something new is happening.

"We may not win this year, but we expect that we'll be winning in eight or nine years -- or whenever it is. Politics is a long-term project."

Libertarians also will appear in three of nine congressional contests in Washington. (One Green Party candidate also qualified for the U.S. House, another for the Senate.)

Also, eight Libertarian candidates for the Legislature qualified for the general election.

Support for same-sex marriage is the centerpiece of Bennett's campaign.

"Right now it's the civil rights issue," she said. "We can either, as citizens, step up to the plate and ensure the rights of minorities, or we can choose not to do that.

"We need to talk about it. I think we're going to have a constitutional amendment rammed on us. It's very sad to have the state or federal constitution to deny rights of people. The Constitution is supposed to protect the rights of the minority.

"I'm out there bringing up and talking about issues that would be glossed over if I were not there."

Mills, a lawyer who runs his campaign from his Pierce County practice, says the most important issue of his campaign is choice. He's focused his campaign on the need for alternatives to the two major parties.

Next winter, some Libertarians hope to persuade the Legislature to eliminate the 1 percent threshold during the 2005 session. But most want some safeguard to prevent just anybody from filing as a candidate under their banner.

"Parties are private organizations and are entitled to choose their own candidates," Bennett said.